In the 1920’s, creative and intellectual life flourished within African American communities in the North and Midwest regions of the United States, but nowhere more so than in Harlem. The small New York City neighborhood was filled with black artists, poets, intellectuals, writers, and musicians. Black-owned businesses, from newspapers, publishing houses, and music companies to nightclubs, cabarets, and theaters, helped fuel the neighborhood’s thriving scene.During the Harlem renaissance era many poets used their poems as a platform to bring about African American voices into the conventional American society. These poems touched people and encouraged them to read more.Some of the era’s most important literary and artistic figures migrated to or passed through “the Negro capital of the world.” Langston Hughes, Lucille Clifton and Colleen McElroy were all poets that wrote about what being an African American in the United States was like and what they had to deal with throughout their lives they contributed in defining a period in which African-American artists reclaimed their identity and racial pride in defiance of widespread prejudice and discrimination.
Lit Review
Colleen McElroy’s poem “For my children” emphasizes the transference of stories or history among different generations. McElroy admits she has saved stories for her children, a epitomy for the broader African youth culture. Many references are made to the long history of African peoples. The poem is a journey, winding and twisting around various memories and spirits of the past. Most stanzas begin with a metaphor linking the speaker with a descriptive image. In the second stanza, the speaker's "memory floats downs a long narrow hall." It then goes on to describe grandpa and ancient African tribes. As the poem progresses, it meshes references to the ancient African past to more contemporary times, and the speaker claims to see the spirits and souls of her heritage in the faces and hearts of the new generations of Africans, who are now African Americans. Colleen McElroy has a certain voice in her poem For My Children that helps people to realize how much has changed from her childhood to her own children’s. There was no family tree of family history about where you or siblings came from if you were African American. Therefore, this poem is a way of telling people who were not African American about how they passed down what they knew from their history from generation to generation.
Langston Hughes, an African American poet, was one of the first black voices to be heard in America. He was distinct among his contemporaries with his writing about the blacks' experiences and history. Hughes tackled the same history of black people in his poem "Mother to Son", but this time from a different perspective. It is the perspective of a mother narrating to her son her sufferings and her strength in overcoming the hardships she encountered in life. She is telling the son that life for her "ain't been no crystal stair/ It had tacks in it/ And splinters /And boards torn up". The life of this black mother was full of troubles, of white people mistreating her, even raping her. As she was poor and suffering from racial discrimination, she had to work in humiliating jobs in order to earn a little sum of money that does not suffice her needs. She had to be" sometimes goin' in the dark/ where there ain't been no light". This line implies it was not she that was dark, but it was the darkness of horrible deeds of the whites that made her suffer. Nevertheless, she did not give up; instead, she kept struggling and climbing that hard stair of life. Therefore, she is advising her son and encouraging him to have hope and never give up. His literary works helped shape American literature and politics. Hughes, like others active in the Harlem Renaissance, had a strong sense of racial pride. Through his poetry, novels, plays, essays, and children's books, he promoted equality, condemned racism and injustice, and celebrated African American culture, humor, and spirituality. He once explained that his writing was an attempt to “explain and illuminate the Negro condition in America”. To fulfill this he wrote a numerous amount of poems and literature.
Argument
The Harlem Renaissance helped to redefine how Americans and the world understood African American culture. It integrated black and white cultures, and marked the beginning of a black urban society. A group of people who once held no power and position in a community were now thriving as they spread their culture and ideas. The writing of literature, the composing and performing of music and the production of visual arts was no longer seen simply as an act of creativity; it was a means of “rehabilitating the race in world esteem from that loss of prestige for which the fate and conditions of slavery have been so largely responsible.” Black Americans had entered a new state of racial confidence and felt they had to find alternative ways to disprove the ancient prejudices that prevailed in America. The educated part of the African American community was convinced that they could oppose the stereotype by proving their intellectual ability. They hoped that an increased cultural output would work against the American notion of white supremacy and show that Blacks were no longer willing to accept their alleged status of an uncivilized people without culture. Many held the opinion that white Americans would not treat them as equals unless and until the former slaves proved themselves to be equal, so the importance of culture experienced a huge increase during the early 1920s. The topics that prevailed during the Harlem Renaissance reflected that feeling of marginality and alienation that African Americans were facing. These themes occurred in literature of that period as well as in arts and music. Still, the Harlem Renaissance was as diverse as a movement as the people that created it.
Conclusion
To conclude, the Harlem Renaissance was a cultural upbringing for African Americans because it granted them the ability to redefine their identity and racial pride opposed to the extensive discrimination and prejudice. Poets like Langston Hughes and Colleen McElroy identified ancestral culture, ethnic heritage, and the family history from two continents as important messages to be shared with her children so they can also pass family traditions on to future generations. Knowledge of one’s heritage can provide the roots necessary to branch out and do something that keeps heritage alive for future generations. The Harlem Renaissance’s impact on America was lasting. The movement brought notice to the great works of African American art, and inspired and influenced future generations of African American artists and intellectuals. The self-portrait of African American life, identity, and culture that emerged from Harlem was transmitted to the world at large, challenging the racist and disparaging stereotypes of the Jim Crow South. In doing so, it radically redefined how people of other races viewed African Americans and understood the African American experience.